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Dessert

Port Wine Lozenges

A sweet confection made from port wine, lemon juice, sugar, gelatin, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Port Wine Lozenges

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until the gelatine is dissolved.

Set and cut

  1. Strain through muslin into a pie dish or soup plate.

  2. Allow to cool and cut into squares.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Port wine + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Isinglass or gelatine
Provides the setting structure that turns the liquid into firm, sliceable lozenges.
Port wine
Supplies the main flavour and deep colour of the lozenges.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the wine's tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet port flavour.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm aroma as it infuses into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Heat until the gelatine is dissolved. Gelatine must dissolve completely in the hot liquid to set evenly. Undissolved granules leave weak or grainy spots, while overheating can weaken its setting power.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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